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Online training
Users flock to sites offering career advancement
By Marty Beard
Much press has been devoted to whether online learning ultimately will replace the traditional university classroom.
The conclusion thus far: It will not.
What it will do is play a significant role in educating busy people who want to advance their careers by learning new skills or earning extra credentials.
Online learning continues to increase in popularity, attracting a desirable user base of hard-working, web-savvy adults, says a recent study from Fulcrum Analytics.
As of early 2001, the report says, a fifth of adult web users had participated in some sort of online learning program, be it training for work, a graduate-level university course or preparation for standardized tests.
"I don’t think the internet is going to displace university education or graduate education, but the trend is that as people become more familiar with the internet and more advanced in their online habits, more and more people will take advantage," says Ben Cutler, a senior analyst at Fulcrum Analytics, formerly known as Cyber Dialogue.
Education sites have become increasingly mainstream, with major university programs such as Duke’s Fuqua School of Business offering online degrees and for-profit concerns like Kaplan Inc. offering everything from test preparation classes to an online law school.
A chief appeal of online learning is its flexibility, and that appears to account for a dramatic increase in participants.
As of early 2001, 16.3 million wired adults had participated in online education, up 60 percent from 1997.
The ranks of adult online students will continue to increase, Cutler believes, as more and more people grow more confident and conversant with the medium.
"I believe that as people become more comfortable online and as more people have been online for a longer time, it’s going to be very popular," he says.
Adults who have participated in online learning have been online longer than the average internet user. Online learners have used the internet for an average of 4.5 years, compared to 3.7 years for all adult web users.
They also tend to spend more time online overall. People who use adult education sites spend about 15.3 hours a week online, compared to 11.5 hours for all adult internet users.
"That underscores the idea that going online to educate yourself is something of an advanced activity," Cutler says.
Most online learning takes place at home, Cutler says, rather than on company time.
Yet a majority of those who learn online are spending most of that time on career advancement, as opposed to general learning.
"There will be some people using adult education sites for their own personal fulfillment because they want to have nicer gardens or be able to appreciate French wines better, but the real killer application is in education and training sites," Cutler says.
Fifty-five percent of adult education web site visitors log on for work-related reasons from home, compared to 39 percent of all online adults.
Seventy-five percent of online learners use the internet for business-related purposes, compared to 57 percent of all online adults. Fifty-three percent of adult education site visitors’ online time is devoted to work, compared to 49 percent of that of all wired adults.
Additionally, three quarters of adult internet education participants agree that the internet boosts their workplace productivity.
All that adds up to a promising future for online education, Cutler says, as a place where everyone from busy single parents to busy executives will congregate to get ahead.
"Broadly speaking, it’s an industry that’s going places, and the significance is in how people use it for work and how they add credentials to advance in their careers and make more money."
February 20, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Marty Beard is a staff writer for Media Life.
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